Children Lost In A Game Of Numbers

August 25, 1985|By Jeff Kunerth of The Sentinel Staff

Concern about missing children, all but ignored as a national cause just five years ago, has become an American obsession that has turned into a fast- rolling bandwagon of good intentions and bad information.

Massive efforts by missing children groups and a heightened public awareness helped find an estimated 4,000 children in the past 12 months. Yet the effort is plagued by controversy about inflated estimates of missing children and by rival groups attempting to discredit each other. Worse, the crusade has attracted profiteers exploiting the issue for personal gain.

A three-month investigation by The Orlando Sentinel found:

-- Licensing of missing children groups around the country is weak. A group in Tampa was found to be operated by men convicted of sex offenses and crimes against children. Six of nine registered organizations in Florida have been investigated by the state.

-- To heighten public concern, missing children organizations have exaggerated the number of lost children. Estimates of as many as 3 million a year shift attention from greater problems: changes in society that contribute to kidnappings by separated parents and the even larger number of children who run away from home.

-- Misinformation spread by some groups creates the impression that most missing children are abducted by strangers. These children may actually account for only about 1 percent of the missing. One group raised $49,000 in six months by using highly exaggerated numbers of children snatched by strangers.

-- Widespread fear of abductions has affected the way parents and other adults relate to children. Parents separated from children for only a few moments panic. Adults are reluctant to strike up even casual conversations with children for fear of being mistaken for an abductor.

-- Although hundreds of organizations and businesses distribute photos and information about missing children, efforts are uncoordinated. The picture of a Tampa girl found dead in June 1984 was still posted at the Metro-Dade police headquarters in Miami in July 1985. Effectiveness of missing children organizations also has been undercut by territorial jealousies, rivalries and duplication of efforts.

-- The search to find missing children has attracted some who get into it hoping for big profit, preying on vulnerable parents and offering services of questionable value. A Lexington, Ky., man shackled and photographed his nearly naked daughter to promote his missing children service. In Arkansas, a firm agreed to stop soliciting ads for a missing children calendar after the state found the firm was pocketing the money instead of printing the calendar.

''I don't know who is to blame but we have to get this straightened out before we miss the opportunity to help the children,'' said Leo Hobbs, director of the Victims Advocacy Division of the Kentucky attorney general's office.

THE NUMBERS GAME

The missing children cause rests on a foundation of unsubstantiated numbers. Groups have their estimates, but nobody knows the real number. There also is the tendency by groups to lump together all the missing -- the runaways and the abducted. But there is general agreement that whatever the total number, two-thirds are runaways, 90 percent of whom return home in a matter of days. The other third are mostly abducted by estranged parents. About one percent are taken by strangers.

Nobody knows whether more children are missing now than five or 10 or 20 years ago. Nor is there agreement on who should be counted as missing. At stake is the difference between an enlightened public and a misguided one. Parents have been left vulnerable to solicitation by bogus organizations and purveyors of worthless products.

''What a lot of these organizations are doing is exploiting the fear parents have as the result of all this information and misinformation about missing children,'' said Kentucky's Hobbs.

Although law enforcement and missing children groups often disagree on numbers, most agree that a better job needs to be done, including Denny Abbott, executive director of the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center in Fort Lauderdale.

''We have to get a handle on things, because that is going to affect legislation,'' Abbott says.

Patrick Doyle, director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement criminal justice information system, agrees. ''You can't solve a problem until you know what it is,'' he said. ''The variances are too far apart for us to delve into the issue.''

The most frequently used estimate of missing children is 1.5 million a year, a number derived by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, a government-financed organization. The center estimates there are one million runaways every year, around 500,000 parental custody kidnappings and between 4,000 and 20,000 abductions by strangers.